This thread is branching from another conversation between me and Nick on another thread.The argument was much more complicated there, and I have changed the specifics for this thread.

My position is that there is no such thing as "Toxic Behavior" that shouldn't be allowed in a game like an MMORPG. (Unless it is hacking/cheating/exploit abuse)

An RPG is a Role Playing Game and I believe you should be able to play any in-game role you want. ---There should be Good Hero Players that help newbies and make youtube tutorials.---There should also be Evil Players who literally just are as mean as possible to everyone else who plays the game.---Then there will be a bunch of people in the middle between these two extremes.

Now, I know that with NO RULES anarchy can kill the population of a game but I guess my question is this: How evil do you allow players to be towards other players in an open world MMORPG. And also, do you only allow evil actions? Or if someone harasses someone with words, should that be something they could be banned for?

To me, as soon as you give players a "Mute" feature, it is up to them to block text they do not like. (You could also make a Profanity Filter to block bad words)

I know I am the minority on this (at least from other conversations I have had on this topic), but I'd like to hear other's thoughts in regards to Hades 9.

I agree it is important to leave a lot of choice to the players and give them a "sandbox" kind of experience where their choices and playstyle matter and can be chosen by themselves.From what I know, player swill have A LOT of choice how they want to play the game, one of them (pirate) is literally all about bullying people ;D

Flatlander wrote:there is no such thing as "Toxic Behavior" that shouldn't be allowed

Just for fun: I suggest you play some League of Legends, some **** is not even fun anymore. Remember, gaming is a lot about fun for everyone.

Flatlander wrote:if someone harasses someone with words, should that be something they could be banned for?

From a moderation standpoint: We can't have people running around spamming racist/etc/etc stuff in the chat.There is behaviour that can't be tolerated, and as soon as you get an online game into the hands of the public, you get to deal with a lot of bs.

Flatlander wrote:To me, as soon as you give players a "Mute" feature, it is up to them to block text they do not like.

While mute is an important feature, it should not be the only answer. Having to block players isn't fun, and doesn't help creating the immersive and social gameplay an MMO is aiming for.

Flatlander wrote:(You could also make a Profanity Filter to block bad words)

That stuff never works 100%.

Contrary to what this will read like: I am not opposed to your ideas. We should have some of that. But there is no absolute, and moderation is probably still necessary (and need some kind of punishment, like chat restrictions for x time, softbans and [hopefully never to be used] permabans).

In my opinion a lot of this can be handled with comon sense and wheaton's law. But people will be people, and trolls will troll ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have played plenty of that game in the past (not anymore, I have grown tired of it gameplay wise, there is only so much fun you can have on Summoner's Rift and they refuse to make new maps).

From my experience the game goes like this:We will for this example use the following Players:Player A: - Is new (or simply terrible) at the game and is either learning, or "Playing for Fun" -- Playing a Top-Lane Bruiser ChampionPlayer B: - Is experienced (or at least thinks he is) and is trying to win -- Playing a Mid Mage ChampionThe other 3 players on your team are just playing and do not type. -- Irrelevant for this example

Team joins a game and Player A goes top lane, and Player B goes mid.

Player B farms minions (last hitting) and plays safe. Player A tries to kill his opponent underneath his turret, and dies (Player B did not see this happen as he was watching his own lane)

Player B continues playing safely, and notices Player A pushing forward towards the opponents turret.

Player B types to Player A "You may want to get back, the Jungler is MIA and you could die to a gank." Player A responds, "I died so I have to farm minions or i'll get behind."

Player B watches Player A then attempt to Turret Dive his opponent again, and he dies again to the Turret.

Player B types to Player A, "Hey, can you please stop being so risky, I am trying my best to win this game." Player B responds, "I am playing for fun, not to win, Tryhard."

Player B holds back his anger, and continues the game (losing in the end).

Player B starts his next match, with all new players, (Player A is not present thankfully).

Player B goes mid on his best character (mage) again. Then sees Player C (New Player) walk into his lane, try to kill his opponent and die.

Player B then types to Player C. "Hey, you just gave my opponent a kill, in the future let me know if you are going to try to gank, and I can help you, or tell you it is too risky."

Player C then responds, "You should have seen me coming, my death was your fault, have fun losing bye." And goes afk.

Player B plays the rest of the game and loses a 4v5 to the enemy team.

Player B then goes into his 3rd Match.

Player D (New player) dies face-checking a bush in bottom lane.

Player B gives friendly advice to Player D: "Hey, you should never face-check a bush at the start of the game."

Player D responds "Whatever, what were the chances of all 5 of them being there. There was no possible way to avoid that."

Player B (Finally losing his cool) responds "Like I said dipshit, don't face-check bushes at the start of a game, wait until you see people on the map in each lane so you know it is reasonably safe!

Player B is then reported for Toxic Behavior and banned from the game.

That's basically League of Legends for you. Good players are punished for "Toxic Behavior" because they are tired of the bullshit from bad players.Of course, there are some bad players that are also Toxic, but that just shows that "Toxic Behavior" isn't the problem, it's Toxic Actions.

You should only be punished for intentional feeding, going afk, etc. Not for typing words in chat and arguing with other players.

Personally, I am a hyper-competitive person and I love the salt, I remember one thing my coach told me in ZA, "if they play during hit them back where it hurts most, on the scoreboard". Honestly, there is nothing in gaming I enjoy more than playing chill and dicking about, only to have an enemy or Allie get salty and raging, and the next round put on my gave face and pull shit they didn't even know was possible. then the silence, that silence afterwards is soooo priceless. (this mostly happens n Rainbow 6 Seige nowadays)

I do not think any form of speech or actions within the game should even be hindered, I really dislike the idea of censoring in any way (however from a business standpoint sometimes it is needed if you are targeted younger markets, which we do not so fuck it)

I think where I draw the line is the same place you do

Flatlander wrote:(Unless it is hacking/cheating/exploit abuse)

However "Exploit abuse" is a very gray area, i remember in Crysis 1 there was a bug where if you ran at a wall, and just before you hit it you put your suit into strength mode, then flicked the mouse down the moment you hit the wall you push back off the wall, but you do so upwards, and with insane amounts of skill and practise you can use this to literally run up the side of buildings. this imo made the game 10x better and fit so well with the game's motif of the player being a sci-fi super soldier. however 'technically' it could be considered exploit abuse but in this case, not only would I not try to hinder it, I would have built on it and polished it into a full-fledged feature and integrated it into the tutorials so all players knew about it as a super late game skill to learn. (this was not what Crytek did, they removed it in the next expansion which honestly meant almost all of the die hard Crysis fans never moved on from Crysis 1)

But, then you have other glitches, like there use to be a glitch in Seige where you could get under one of the maps and shoot up through the floor, and because the floors are just one sided polys you can see up but they cannot see down, so you can see the entire enemy team and kill them all easily from below the map without them being able to do anything. I do not know how this glitch worked, so maybe it was a random bug that happened rarely or it was a very complicated glitch to reproduce and most people didn't know how. However I can tell this being on the other side of this glitch was worse than facing a hacker, I could still kill hackers, (unless they are full godmoding) even with aimbot you can flank them, or with wall hacks, you can outshoot them. but this, there was NOTHING you could do, just die. unlike trickjumping in crysis, I do not feel this "added" to the game in any way, it made it completely unplayable when you encountered someone who knew how to reproduce this bug.

I know the references I give are not MMORPGs, that's because honestly, they are not really my bread and butter, and in MP RTS games I find magnitudes less salt. I actually, struggle to remember the last time I encountered any kind of unfriendly behaviour in an RTS MP game.

Flatlander wrote: Good players are punished for "Toxic Behavior" because they are tired of the bullshit from bad players.

I see issues with this logic, you're basically saying its bad player's fault that 'Player A' lost his cool, and although this can happen. having played with many toxic people VERY few of them fit this mould. most of them are the "everything bad that happens was someone else's fault" type of player. Also, I have had friends banned from lol, and honestly it took ALOT more than just calling someone dipship every now and then xD.

That said, In the situation you gave I do not think play A should have been banned, however, If Player A's excuse for being banned was "the mean noobs forced him to say bad things" I think he needs to grow the fuck up and take responsibility for his actions, he did KNOWING and WILLINGLY do something against the rules. (I think the rule is stupid sure, but knowingly breaking rules then blaming it on others is a bit childish imo)

Flatlander wrote:You should only be punished for intentional feeding, going afk, etc. Not for typing words in chat and arguing with other players.

What happened to the whole no one should be punished for anything and everyone plays the game as they wish? this goes directly against what you said in your opening about how players should be able to play however they wanted with no restrictions does it not?

Honestly, I don't have anything to argue about so I'm just being contradictory because its fun xD

I just perused the thread, but if that’s the most toxic encounter you’ve had in LoL then you’ve only played against civilized people. Unfortunately, games allow an uncivilized nature to flow without (major) repercussion.

Toxic isn’t simply saying “oh, you’re bad... git good trolllol your mom”. That behavior is immature and annoying, but not toxic. Toxic is finding out generalities about a target and being caustic based on those real life attributes.

Another example would be racism, sexism, and other general debauchery. That IS toxic.

Shadows wrote:I just perused the thread, but if that’s the most toxic encounter you’ve had in LoL then you’ve only played against civilized people. Unfortunately, games allow an uncivilized nature to flow without (major) repercussion.

Toxic isn’t simply saying “oh, you’re bad... git good trolllol your mom”. That behavior is immature and annoying, but not toxic. Toxic is finding out generalities about a target and being caustic based on those real life attributes.

Another example would be racism, sexism, and other general debauchery. That IS toxic.

This ^Toxic behaviour isn't something you want in a game, games are about having fun and being toxic is about making people not have fun. It's also never something that's 'in character' ie one character harassing another, it's from a player aimed at another so it being a RPG isn't really an excuse

also since piracy will probably take the form of being random death matches there probably needs to be something that makes opening fire not the go to option, I say "something" cause it needs to not be something super blatant and obvious, but some design or feature that discourage it in a discrete-ish way.What I'm trying to say is that 1 piracy wouldn't fall under toxic in this game and 2 that players should be allowed to be pirates but also 3 I kinda don't want a DayZ in space, DayZ ended up being just a deathmatch game with some zombies on the side and random loot that you need to kill other people: nobody was friendly, nobody was neutral, shoot on sight and aim to kill.

ante185 wrote:also since piracy will probably take the form of being random death matches there probably needs to be something that makes opening fire not the go to option, I say "something" cause it needs to not be something super blatant and obvious, but some design or feature that discourage it in a discrete-ish way.What I'm trying to say is that 1 piracy wouldn't fall under toxic in this game and 2 that players should be allowed to be pirates but also 3 I kinda don't want a DayZ in space, DayZ ended up being just a deathmatch game with some zombies on the side and random loot that you need to kill other people: nobody was friendly, nobody was neutral, shoot on sight and aim to kill.

Role Playing as a Pirate in Hades 9 isn't Toxic.

If I go around, saying "ARRG I'm going to Plunder your Ship for Booty Matey!" And killing everyone I think has good loot, that shouldn't be punished in any way, ever.

Now, you could of course make it so the more people I kill the more notorious I become and the Space-Police attack me on sight, and bounty hunters randomly show up to try to take me out while i'm out PvEing, and players can even kill me to get the bounty. Sure that is all fine and works in an RPG world.

But some rule that says "If you kill 2 people a day, fine, but if you kill 3, you are locked out of all NPCs in the game" then you just make it so I have to make 5 accounts and kill 2 people a day on each account.

If I go around, saying "ARRG I'm going to Plunder your Ship for Booty Matey!" And killing everyone I think has good loot, that shouldn't be punished in any way, ever.

Now, you could of course make it so the more people I kill the more notorious I become and the Space-Police attack me on sight, and bounty hunters randomly show up to try to take me out while i'm out PvEing, and players can even kill me to get the bounty. Sure that is all fine and works in an RPG world.

But some rule that says "If you kill 2 people a day, fine, but if you kill 3, you are locked out of all NPCs in the game" then you just make it so I have to make 5 accounts and kill 2 people a day on each account.

You're conjecturing, I talked about all that.1st sentence is something I explicitly said2nd paragraph was the kinda stuff I was implying that there might be a need of, but I didn't want to suggest a solution as it's something that probably doesn't have an easy solution 3rd paragraph is just hyperbole and the kinda stuff I implicitly suggested against when I insisted that whatever the design or feature needed to be discrete, in other words not that.

ante185 wrote:also since piracy will probably take the form of being random death matches there probably needs to be something that makes opening fire not the go to option, I say "something" cause it needs to not be something super blatant and obvious, but some design or feature that discourage it in a discrete-ish way.

The plan is for this to happen naturally via the environment, if you encounter another player far away from Hades 9, even if you think you can beat him, with the state your fleet will be in after the battle will make it just that much harder to make it back to Hades 9 alive, and if you die on the way you gained nothing. The objective is to find just the right balance where even enemies may find a situation where working together is the best way they will survive.

I will admit right now, I am a die hard Dayz mod fan, I started playing it the day rocket opened the very first arma2 dayz alpha server. so I can guarantee you I personally will be a pirate, but I want the game to make being a pirate a decision with consequences, like everything in Hades 9 will be. I want to come across another fleet plump with loot and need to think of how the hell will I get all that loot and make it back to Hades 9 alive, I do not want that to be easy. The problem in dayZ IMO is there is never a situation where not shooting the other guy is better, and the funny thing is, over the years playing dayz, the VERY rare and random encounters where I meant another player and we couldn't kill each other, because neither had ammo, etc. ended up growing into some of my best online friendships.

Sorry for the long and kinda off topic rant, its just you brought up probably the topic I am most interested in as a developer, creating an environment where players need to think critically about there next move and not just shoot on sight.

Flatlander wrote:Role Playing as a Pirate in Hades 9 isn't Toxic.

If I go around, saying "ARRG I'm going to Plunder your Ship for Booty Matey!" And killing everyone I think has good loot, that shouldn't be punished in any way, ever.

Now, you could, of course, make it so the more people I kill the more notorious I become and the Space-Police attack me on sight, and bounty hunters randomly show up to try to take me out while I'm out PvEing, and players can even kill me to get the bounty. Sure that is all fine and works in an RPG world.

But some rule that says "If you kill 2 people a day, fine, but if you kill 3, you are locked out of all NPCs in the game" then you just make it so I have to make 5 accounts and kill 2 people a day on each account.

IMO playing in character, i.e. being a blood hungry pirate who threatens to flay people alive and cover his ship in their skins is awesome and adds so much to the game.

I think the reference about piracy was more promoting interesting bad guys, not just "shoot on sight because its the best option for every scenario" I personally do not consider shoot on sight to be toxic in any way, however games that are designed around making players way the consequences vs the potential returns of PK in an engaging way promote much better RP experiences IMO. That said I will in no way directly punish people who shoot on sight, but making it back to Hades 9 alive with a fleet that was just in a vicious engagement will not be easy.

ante185 wrote:You're conjecturing, I talked about all that.1st sentence is something I explicitly said2nd paragraph was the kinda stuff I was implying that there might be a need of, but I didn't want to suggest a solution as it's something that probably doesn't have an easy solution 3rd paragraph is just hyperbole and the kinda stuff I implicitly suggested against when I insisted that whatever the design or feature needed to be discrete, in other words not that.

I apologize if my reply felt like it was aimed directly at you.I re-typed it like 4 times trying to make it sound right, honestly I was just trying to expand upon your post.

Also, responding to Nick,One great thing I just thought of would be the ability to "Scan" ships for their cargo.

Then the other ship can detect that it is being scanned, and get the hell out of there if they are afraid of losing what they have.

I could imagine doing a mission, and then seeing an alert "Detecting Scan on Your Ship!!!" Then thinking "oh hell, I need to get the hell out of here, I'm not prepared for a PvP battle right now."

Depending on how big areas are and how far away you can see someone before they can shoot you, you could avoid all conflict if you played active enough.